


Helping Out

by JaneDavitt



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Ficlet, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 08:00:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneDavitt/pseuds/JaneDavitt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set at the start of BtVS S4. Xander is helping Giles sort books but that's not quite how Giles sees it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Helping Out

Xander’s been here for an hour now and Giles has gradually, mercifully lost the erection that sprang up, ever hopeful, stupid and single-minded, the moment Xander smiled and asked what Giles wanted him to do.

_Kneel for me, mouth open and ready, strip and bend over, legs too close together so I have to kick them apart, come screaming my name and make that name not sound like ‘friend’, ‘father’ or ‘fool’...._

“More shelving, I’m afraid. I took another box or two out of storage.”

Xander nods, thinking perhaps -- without too much shame, because he’s young and he still believes the world owes him a living -- that Giles is doing this to make sure he has spending money, or for company because the summer holidays have ended and there’s no work for either of them.

Neither is true. Xander’s babbling just makes the silence between the words louder, and Giles’ impotence of spirit is in no way lessened by his cock’s ability to stiffen when a boy he’s known for years rolls up his sleeves and exposes bare, brown arms.

Xander’s body...he’s seen it all before, head to toe. Xander’s shrugged out of wet clothes in front of him; demon-slimed or just muddy, eased more slowly out of ripped clothes and let Giles tend to wounds placed too awkwardly for him to deal with. Giles has touched, seen, smelled Xander from a distance of inches and never felt more than a mild twinge of appreciation for a body that, extracted from baggy brightness, is strong and young and therefore beautiful without trying.

Seen it all...so he shouldn’t, he really shouldn’t react the way he does when Xander reaches sideways and his shirt hikes up to show a narrow strip of bare back, shouldn’t want to follow the groove of spine with finger or tongue in both directions...but he does, oh he does.

He knows why, too. Worked it out the first day when Xander’s hands curled around the dollar bills Giles had counted out into his palm and Giles had to step back, step away, back away, run because he’d just paid Xander for being at his beck and call for two hours and that changed everything.

Because if he’d paid Xander for his time, one could argue that during that time, Xander was his.

Bought and paid for.

Giles has no intention of asking Xander to do anything beyond remember that 'I' comes before 'J' but that's hardly the point.

He's paying Xander money to be with him. There's a word for that.


End file.
